


I Missed It All

by afterandalasia



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Canon Universe, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Post-Movie(s), Pre-Femslash, Understanding, Use Your Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything, Mal and Audrey might just be friends, even if neither of them would actually admit it. So when Audrey brushes off the birthday celebration that the villain kids have planned for her, Mal is a little put off, and can't help wondering whether there's something else behind it all. It takes her a while to corner Audrey enough to ask - and she is struck speechless by the answer she receives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Missed It All

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Und ich habe alles verpasst](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12040575) by [Quecksilver_Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes)



> Canon-compliant if you squint a bit, I guess; it's never stated outright that this isn't the case.
> 
> Somehow trans Lonnie snuck into this? I have no idea, it just happened. Background thing, not plot-driving.

“So,” said Mal, leaning against the frame of the door. “A little birdie tells me your birthday is coming up.”

Audrey did not even look round as she applied her mascara in the mirror. “Really? Do tell. I really must talk to them about the company they keep.”

“Cute.” She rolled her eyes. “This weekend, let’s hit the town. Show you how to really have a howler.”

Finishing her mascara, Audrey turned her head slightly to either side to admire the results, and fluttered her eyelashes at herself. “I’m flattered,” she said, voice absolutely deadpan. “But the answer is no.”

Slipping the mascara back into her dresser, she got to her feet, all knees-together grace, and gave Mal a perfectly sweet and insincere smile. Mal gave a mocking smile back, with a crinkle of her nose.

“I’m busy.”

She adjusted the glittering pink-and-blue pendant at the base of her throat, scooped up her cream handbag, and swept past Mal into the corridor. It was still an improvement on how they had been before, and Mal’s smile was almost sincere as Audrey stepped past. They were never going to form a club for ex-girlfriends of the now-King, but they could handle mixed company well enough.

“So, this is what I get for trying to be good?”

Audrey looked back over her shoulder. “Save it for those who need extra goodness. Some of us produce plenty of it ourselves.”

As she sauntered off in her high heels, Mal laughed, but she did peel herself upright from the doorframe. She even closed Audrey’s door for her; Auradon must have been having an effect. There was a time she would have found Jay to tell him that the room was unlocked and waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

“So, how’s the plan for this weekend going?” said Lonnie. She had her feet outstretched so that Evie, lying on her front and wearing a look of intense concentration, could paint tiny mathematics-inspired patterns on her toenails, and wasn’t paying too much attention to the book in her lap. To be fair, Mal was only half-concentrating on their latest reading for Enchanted Forestry anyway. “You said that Jay was going to scope out some places, right?”

“He didn’t have much luck,” said Evie, words half-mumbled as she focused. “Turns out most places in Auradon actually care how old you are. He said something about cards?”

“Oh, wow, I didn’t think that you meant, you know, actual nightclubs. There’s a couple of under-21 places, though, I figured he was going to compare the music there.”

Mal snorted, flipping to the next page, and even Evie raised an eyebrow. “Anyway,” Evie continued, “he managed to find a couple of dives in the end. They sound good.”

“Well, I’m afraid to say,” said Mal, folding down the corner of the page – ignoring Lonnie’s wince – and putting her book aside. “Our birthday girl won’t be joining us.”

“What?” Evie rolled over onto her side to look at Mal. “You made it clear this wasn’t us planning some prank, right? We actually wanted to show her how to party?”

Mal rolled her eyes. “Sure, I greatly impressed on her that it wasn’t a prank, that wouldn’t have made her all suspicious that it was.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Audrey said she’s busy.” Shrugging as best she could from her prone position, Mal kept her voice nonchalant. “Whatever. We’ll just take a balloon with a wig on and tag it as her. Carlos says that he’s figured out all this Facing Book stuff.”

She would have left it there, had it not been for the look that she saw pass across Lonnie’s face. A hint of guilt, the quick flicker of a secret not hidden quickly enough under a smile. Mal fixed her eyes on the Auradon native, gaze piercing.

“Unless there’s something I’m missing,” she said pointedly.

“Audrey’s just… always busy,” Lonnie said. Her hands twisted together in the lap of her oversized pyjamas, and perhaps an Auradonian wouldn’t even have noticed it. “She goes home for her birthday, you know. I mean, sorry, that came out totally wrong,” she started to add.

“Don’t worry,” said Evie quickly, “my mother always threw me birthday parties. I know what you mean.”

“Or it could be,” Mal said, drawing out the words just a little compared to usually, “that there’s something this little birdie,” she popped the ‘b’, “isn’t telling us.”

Evie was not such a suspicious sort as Mal was, but she was good at reading Mal’s moods, and when she swung her gaze onto Lonnie it was more intrigued as well. Lonnie looked uncomfortably between them, her smile becoming fixed, then she snapped her book shut.

“You know what? I think I left my notes in my room. I’ll just go and get them.”

She was on her feet in an instant, quicker than Mal would have given her credit for had she not known about the kickboxing, and quickly stepped beyond Evie’s attempt to grab her ankle. From anyone else, Lonnie probably would have escaped easily, but Mal felt her magic rush through her as she pushed up onto her hands.

“ _By power I wield, door be sealed!_ ”

Lonnie hit the door a moment too late to actually open it, and groaned in frustration as she rattled the handle. “Really?” she turned back to face Mal. “I’m not sure that counts as being good, you know.”

“Neither does keeping secrets,” said Mal. She swung her legs round so that she could sit on the bed, which was probably not that much more of an intimidating position than lying on her front but felt like at least something of an improvement. She crooked a finger at Lonnie. “Come on. Spill.”

For a moment, Lonnie paused, looking actually pained, then she grimaced. “I’m sorry, you guys. You know that I love you, but I can’t go telling peoples’ secrets like that.”

“So, what?” Mal said. “There’s other people with secrets? Maybe I should ask Ben…” she pretended to muse aloud, actually going so far as to place her fingertip against her lips.

With one final, useless waggle of the door handle, Lonnie gave up and turned fully away from the door, folding her hands across her chest. “Look,” she said finally, dropping the word heavy on the air, “Everyone’s got secrets, OK? I mean, I bet that _you_ guys have still got things that you haven’t told _us_.” She looked between them, and Evie let her eyes flick aside sheepishly, but Mal stayed motionless. Hiding her secrets had been second nature ever since she was old enough to walk. “But if you’ve got them, we’ve got them, right?

“Look, it’s nothing against _you_. I mean, not you personally,” said Lonnie. “It’s just that, when Ben announced that villains were coming to the school, right, some of us sort of… agreed on a few things. That we knew about each other because, hello,” she waved vaguely around them, “we’re all completely in each others’ pockets here, kind of hard to get away from that. But there are some things that are _personal_ , you know, and we… decided to keep them quiet for now.”

“Keeping secrets from the villain kids,” said Mal flatly. “Nice show of trust. But to be fair,” she let her voice become more airy, and leant back on her hands, “we were sort of evil those first days. So maybe it was a good idea.”

She could see Lonnie relax marginally as soon as her posture became softer, and wondered for far from the first time how it was that the Auradon kids could be so easy to manipulate like that.

“OK,” Lonnie said. She clasped her hands in front of her. “This would probably be easier if I gave you an example, right? Like, what we agreed, it’s just things that are _personal_. Not, like, bad things or anything. So, me? I’m trans.”

Her voice had a tremble of nervousness in it, and she pressed her lips together tightly as she waited for a response. Mal looked at her blankly.

“I… did say that bit aloud, didn’t I?” said Lonnie.

“It’s fine,” Evie said quickly, sitting up and crossing her legs. “It’s just, you know, we were kind of surprised. But we don’t mind,” she added, with a big bright smile and a look to Mal which very clearly explained that she _did_ know what Lonnie was talking about, and would explain later.

Whatever it was, Evie had clearly said the right thing, because Lonnie let out a relieved sigh. “Thank you. That was just because we didn’t know how anyone on the Isle was about things… like that, you know?”

“My mother had just about every make-up book on the island,” said Evie. She set about putting the lids back on all of the nail varnishes in front of her, and closing her jar of glow-in-the-dark pigments as well. “There was one that was just full of tips for trans women. Which you don’t need, by the way,” she continued, with a quick look up at Lonnie. “Your makeup is always lovely.”

Normally, Mal could keep up with most of Evie’s talk about make-up, or at least could keep track of where she was going with it. For the moment, at least, she had absolutely no clue what Lonnie was talking about, but was still far more interested in finding out whatever was going on with Audrey anyway. “It is,” said Mal, with a smile.

The smile that Lonnie gave them was absolutely _grateful_ , and Mal wondered just what it was that she had been told. In a world not all that different, it would have been to have the power over her, but for now at least Mal was finding herself more driven by interest.

“OK, but, you see how that would be private, right?” she said. Mal nodded in the appropriate place. “Well, some of the others have got things like that as well. And it was my choice to tell you guys, so it needs to be _their_ choice to tell you. You know?”

“And,” Mal drew out the word, tilting her head, “how exactly does that explain why Audrey’s going home for her birthday?”

“It means that it’s important to her to go home,” said Lonnie, “and why it’s important… is hers to explain. If she wants to.”

Mal paused for a moment, eyes boring into Lonnie’s, wondering if there was a hint in there of what the explanation might be. But nothing was forthcoming, and she gave up and shrugged as if it could not matter less to her. “Sure, I get it. Now sit down, let Evie finish your nails.” She shuffled back onto the bed and swung her legs back up, grabbing for her textbook like nothing had happened. “You don’t want to see how she gets when she’s interrupted. Oh,” she caught herself, and flicked her fingers at the door, “ _Door once blocked, now unlock._ ”

Evie stuck out her tongue, and Mal pretended to be above it all as she reached for her textbook again. Even if her mind was still tick-tick-ticking away.

 

 

 

 

 

Audrey disappeared somewhere in the middle of Friday, with surprisingly little fanfare when all was said and done. After Jay had gone to all the trouble of finding the dive bars, they went out for the Saturday night anyway, and nursed hangovers on Sunday morning while Mal steadfastly refused to answer Jay’s pleas to do some sort of magical cure for them. She did not even want to think about how badly she could mess up a spell while it felt as if her stomach was trying to escape her body.

She extricated Carlos from the bathtub, and sent Jay to take him back to their dorm instead. They both looked markedly green around the gills.

As soon as the pain in her head began to subside, however, Mal was out of their room and prowling the corridors, keeping an eye out for the return of Audrey and the possible answers for her questions. Her frustration only grew as the day wore on, and finally she cornered Ben and asked him what it was that she didn’t know.

He only gave her a sympathetic look and said that Lonnie was right, and that some things were their own to explain. Determined to remain on the side of good, Mal did not curse him into the middle of next week, and instead set about seeing whether or not Carlos was actually awake yet.

Apparently Jay had given up, and dumped him into _their_ bathtub instead. Mal used a flicker of magic to turn on the shower as she left, and smirked at the yelp.

 

 

 

 

 

It was not until Monday morning that Audrey reappeared. Mal’s eagle eyes followed her around the school, picking up all of the little details that were _off_. She wore an outfit that she’d worn before, some months back, and that was another thing that wouldn’t have meant anything on the Isle of the Lost, but here in Auradon where people could afford a better range of clothing it stood out a little more. Besides, it had silver details, which did not match with the gold of the pink-and-blue pendant that she was still wearing. Her hair was up, but it was a _lazy_ sort of up, the sort that girls aimed to have so that they could say that they had just rolled out of bed.

Of course, it could have just been an off day. Everyone had them. Except Evie, of course, but that was Evie. Even Mal had days when she didn’t want to bother with every evil detail of her clothing. But then there was the way that she wasn’t around at lunch to sit with her friends and gossip about her weekend, and when someone bumped into her in the afternoon she stooped down to pick up her own books.

The Audrey that Mal knew would have given the younger girl a dressing-down, and waited for someone else to pick up the books for her. This time, though, Audrey just rolled her eyes, collected her books, and walked off still ignoring the girl’s stammered attempts to apologise.

There was only one thing for it. After a brief raid of the kitchens, she was in possession of an entire tray of cream cakes, which she had it on the best of authorities – Ben – that Audrey was an absolute sucker for. Some of them had even been cut and rearranged to supposedly look like swans, although Mal was not so sure on that one.

When Mal reached Audrey’s door, she was not particularly surprised to see that it was closed, and balanced the tray on one hand to knock as perkily as she could manage on the door. She could hear the television inside, but there was no response, and she rolled her eyes.

An Auradon kid probably would have knocked again, but Mal just put her hand on her hip. “Audrey, it’s Mal. Open on up, or I’ll hex your door open.”

She counted in her head while waiting for the response. At four, the television went quiet, by seven she heard footsteps, and at fifteen the door was jerked open.

“What do you _want_?” snapped Audrey.

Mal whipped the tray between them. “Cream cake?” she offered.

Audrey looked at her as if she was not sure whether to be insulted or angry. This close, Mal could see that the princess was not wearing any make-up now, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. Her slightly red eyes, at that.

“I’m not in the mood for cream cake,” she said. “Thank you,” and a less sincere thanks Mal had never heard, even on the Isle, “but I’m good.”

She went to close the door, and really, who did she think Mal was? One sturdy boot between door and frame, and the door bounced open again; if Audrey had been a slightly different person, Mal was pretty sure she would have sworn from the flash of anger in her eyes. But then Mal slipped into the room so fast that Audrey did not even have time to stop her, tray still held up between them.

“But you love cream cakes,” said Mal. “Here, I’ll leave them for you for later.”

She turned and slid them onto the dressing table, not even dislodging a little wing from one of the supposed-swans. From the corner of her eye, she took in the room, the rumpled blanket on the bed, the television just paused rather than actually turned off.

The television. Mal stopped, straightened up, and looked curiously at the screen. Presumably seeing her line of view, Audrey gave a huff, closed the door, and stormed across to the bed to snatch up the remote and turn off the screen. But before she did, Mal saw the baby there, wrapped in a pink and blue blanket, cradled in the arms of an undeniably beautiful young woman.

“You were watching a video – from when you were baby?” The words burst out on waves of laughter as Mal turned to look at Audrey in disbelief. How conceited could one person get? Audrey was clearly embarrassed at being caught, and in a life not far distant Mal would have filed that away for good blackmail material, but for now she was too bemused – and amused – to much care. “Wow, I think that might be a new bar for you. You realise babies are all squash-faced and mushy, right? Not exactly cute, let alone beautiful.”

“What are you even doing here?” said Audrey, dropping all pretence of being nice. Oddly enough, Mal preferred her this way. With honest words.

“I came to ask how your birthday went,” Mal replied. She supposed that at least if she was getting honesty, she could give a little back. “I guess it was better than anything we could manage at school, huh? Some nice princessy party, bigger presents,” like some sort of child, but Mal did not ask that part aloud. “Get to see your mother? You know, it is kinda weird,” she added, as the thought occurred, “you always go on about your mother, she’s so beautiful, she’s so lovely, you really should ring her more often. I mean, even I talk to my mother, and she’s an evil lizard.

“So really,” she added, seeing the tension in Audrey’s shoulders, that little shift in her eyes that meant Mal was getting closer to whatever the truth was, “what is it with you and her anyway? What does she think about that whole hero-worship thing you’ve got going with her?” She saw Audrey swallow, and lowered her voice. “Is it a bit _weird_?”

“She’s _dead_ , you stupid fairy,” Audrey blurted. “And why would I want to talk to _you_ about it anyway?”

Then she burst into tears.

For a good few seconds, Mal just looked at her dumbly. Not just because of what Audrey _said_ , but because she was _crying_ , and what did you even _do_ with crying people anyway? Most of Mal’s experience had been to do with _making_ people cry, and then feeling pleased with herself for doing so. But it rapidly became apparent that this was not going to be some momentary sob that vanished off again, as Audrey continued to cry into her hands, shoulders heaving and huge ugly sounds ripping from her.

She swayed. Well, at least Mal could think of something to do with that. She stepped up, put her hands on Audrey’s arms, and guided her back the couple of steps to the bed, until her knees bumped against it and she sat down heavily. It didn’t do anything about the tears that she could see on Audrey’s hands, but it was a start.

Right, tears. There was that whole handkerchief thing, Evie thought it was chivalrous or whatever. Mal rifled through her pockets with one hand, keeping her other on Audrey’s arm for as long as Audrey didn’t pull away. She found a crumpled green square in her jeans pocket, but it had smears of paint on it and, upset or not, Mal really wasn’t sure that Audrey would be pleased with that.

“Kerchief green, now be clean,” she breathed. It probably wasn’t audible under Audrey’s slowly-abating tears.

She crouched down in front of the princess, moving her hand to rest on Audrey’s knee instead, and pressed the handkerchief against her fingers.

“Here. Use this.”

Audrey snatched it from her, but her eyes were still screwed shut, her nose and cheeks pink, tears and snot mixing on her face. All things considered, Mal wasn’t going to judge. Quickly, almost angrily, Audrey wiped her face clean, moving from her eyes down, and even though it was clear afterwards that she had been crying she seemed more collected by the time that she blew her nose.

“That’s what your friends weren’t telling us, huh?” said Mal, trying to make her voice soft. The look that Audrey gave her was probably aiming for anger, but her lips were still trembling and it rather tempered the venom. “I didn’t realise. That was a dick move even for a villain, though.”

“Yes,” said Audrey haughtily, “it was.”

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” Mal said. She surprised herself a little by meaning it. But then again, she’d never really been one for false apologies – she’d never apologised for anything, before coming to Auradon, after all.

“You should be.”

Well, at least Audrey had some of her fight left, still, even if her words were more muttered than really spat. Audrey wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, which Mal guessed was probably a good idea with the snotty tissue, but it didn’t do a whole lot of good.

“I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want the kids of villains to know that,” she admitted.

Audrey’s gaze hardened as she looked at Mal. “Peripartum cardiomyopathy,” she said, the words jagged and raw, and Mal had no idea what they meant but could hear that Audrey had known them for years, known them and hated them and turned them over and over in her mind. “That’s what the doctors called it. But I heard what else they admitted that it was. The leftover remnants of a curse.”

Mal felt her heart sink in her chest. Funny, she’d never thought she could have that sensation; she knew it wasn’t literal, but she could almost feel the weight in the centre of her ribs, pulling everything down towards her guts.

“So,” said Audrey, with a brittle, dangerous smile. “Your mother won.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The only one that won.”

Speechlessness was another thing that was new to Mal. Her hand curled into a fist on Audrey’s knee, rumpling the fabric of her skirt, as Audrey kept that smile and those accusatory eyes on her.

“My mother’s a bitch,” said Mal.

Audrey laughed, a sharp bark of sound, but Mal saw the shudder of tension through her.

“I might’ve…” no, honesty, she’d already decided on that. “Yeah, I probably would have been a bitch about it if I’d known, in those first days. I mean, subtly, I’m not a total moron,” she added, with a shrug and a wave of her hand. “But yeah, you were right not to tell me. And I totally shouldn’t have pushed that hard.”

“You’re just used to people answering your questions when you ask.”

It was unexpectedly incisive coming from an Auradonian, and Mal managed not to look impressed but did look at Audrey curiously.

“I’m not a total moron,” said Audrey, even if her voice was trembling.

Unsure what she could really say to that, Mal cocked her head towards the dressing table. “Want a cream cake?”

Audrey crumpled up the handkerchief in both hands, letting the last of the tears on her cheeks dry in the air as she looked over at the cream cakes. “Yes,” she said, after a moment.

Patting Audrey’s knee, Mal straightened up and walked over to retrieve the cakes. She went to pick up one, then figured she might as well go the whole hog and just picked up the tray again, with however many cakes had been fitted onto it.

“Where did you even _get_ these?” said Audrey, as Mal sat down on the bed beside her. She picked up one of the swans, though, and looked at it for a long moment before pulling off the sponge wing.

Mal shrugged, grabbed one of the cream cakes for herself, and started picking the slices of strawberry off the top. “Found them in one of the refrigerators. It’s not like they’ve got cameras in the kitchens or anything.”

“No?”

“Not any more.” She smirked.

With a snort, Audrey shook her head, but she carefully removed the swan’s head before taking a bite out of the body. She chewed the cake slowly, heaving a huge sigh that Mal could practically feel, never mind see. “I can’t believe I just told you that,” she muttered, through half a mouthful. She swallowed and continued more tersely. “I can’t believe I _cried_ in front of you.”

“Well, I gave you a handkerchief and bought you cream cakes. And apologised,” said Mal. “I think we’ve both just ruined our ‘super-bitch’ personalities.”

“Please,” said Audrey. She licked cream off her fingers. “ _Super_ bitch? I thought you were aiming for _mediocre_ bitch.”

“Well, I haven’t had so much practice at that uniquely Auradonian bitchiness,” she replied, “but rest assured that on the Isle of the Lost? I made super-bitch look like…” she fumbled for a rhyme, and failed to find one. “No bitch at all.”

They moved on to another round of cakes.

“So, that’s why your grandmother was at Family Day, huh?” said Mal. She tried plucking the wings off the swan before eating it, but it felt strangely vicious. Then again, maybe that was the only sort of outlet that the Auradon kids had.

Audrey nodded. “She’s been great about being there for me. I mean, it’s partially for her as well, I know that. Like, she gets everything with me that she didn’t get with my mother. And I’m glad that she gets to experience it, sort of… being a mother herself. I just wish…”

“Yeah,” said Mal. This time, she had deliberately chosen one that was not strawberry. Chocolate, it turned out, was pretty amazing as well. “You know,” she tucked up one leg underneath her, and kept her eyes on the cakes. If she looked up at Audrey, she would lose the nerve to say something that sounded so vulnerable, “I wonder, a lot, who my father actually is.”

From the shift of Audrey’s body, that had made her look round. Mal still did not look, and wondered how the heir presumptive to the Isle of the Lost had become afraid to look some princess – let alone Sleeping Beauty’s daughter – in the eye.

“I don’t even know if he knows that he’s a father. All I know is that he’s human. And, I guess, that he must be someone from the Isle, since it was years after my mother was banished there.”

“You want to find out?” said Audrey. “They can do DNA profiling and stuff now. A lot of the villains had their DNA taken before they were banished, they might be able to tell.”

Mal had seen that, poking around while she was still trying to figure out how the internet worked. She had made sure that the door and windows were locked before she had allowed herself to look at _how to find family members_ , as if it were some clandestine, forbidden site.

“It only works with human blood,” said Mal. But then she shrugged. “Maybe it’s for the best, though. This way, I don’t need to know anything about my father, and I don’t need to compare myself to him.”

“You know, there was a time when I thought that being the child of a villain would be the worst thing in the world,” said Audrey. Mal was just about ready to roll her eyes. “But then I realised that, in some ways? You are so _lucky_.”

The eyeroll turned into a look of bewilderment. “What?” said Mal.

“You haven’t got anything to live _up_ to,” said Audrey, with a vague wave. “All you need to do is be better than your parents, and it’s not like that’s hard. You can just be normal people, and you’ve _won_. Whereas Ben? He has to live up to a father that united the entire country. Chad is never going to live up to Prince Charming, never mind his mother, and I…” the words seemed to catch in her throat.

“Don’t feel like you can live up to being Sleeping Beauty’s daughter?”

“Who could?” Audrey snorted in a thoroughly unladylike way. “Fairy-given beauty, grace, singing voice… the whole point of Sleeping Beauty’s story is that nobody could match her. Not even her daughter.”

“Do you _want_ to be your mother? Because I could probably still whip up a sleeping curse, if you really wanted one,” said Mal. She was just about sure that Audrey would see the jest for what it was, and was indeed rewarded with a light slap to the shoulder and nothing worse. “Yeah, figured.”

“Mal,” said Audrey, her voice softening. When Mal looked up, she was surprised to see that Audrey’s smile had softened as well, and that she looked tired even as her eyes were becoming less pink and puffy. “Thank you. You were kind of a bitch about it,” she cocked her head, “but… you could have walked off, once you knew. And you didn’t.”

Before Mal was capable of coming up with a response, Audrey leant across and kissed her just at the corner of her mouth. Hair brushed Mal’s cheek, and it sent a warm flush across her skin.

“Do you, er, want me to leave the cakes?” said Mal. Lucifer, she had no idea how to do any of this. Audrey was looking at her as if she had somehow done something _right_ , and she had absolutely no idea what it was. Probably easiest to put it down to the cream cakes.

Audrey put her hand over Mal’s, on the sheets between them. “Or you could share them,” she said.

Mal glanced over at the television. “No home movies,” she said, as if it were some stern ruling. She was fairly sure that Audrey wouldn’t really have wanted to watch them anyway, but it was probably better to be on the same side. Indeed, Audrey raised an eyebrow. “And none of that sappy rom-com stuff.”

“What, you think your slasher films are the height of cinematic brilliance? You probably still have _VHS_ ,” said Audrey, with an edge of malicious glee.

“You people just have no respect for the classics,” said Mal. She tried to punctuate it with popping the last of her current cream cake into her mouth, but the piece was entirely too large and she ended up over-stuffing her mouth instead. She tried to say something else, and it came out muffled.

“Classics, you say?” Audrey looked her up and down. “How do you feel about birds?”

Mal gave her a dubious look.

“Trust me.” Unfolding off the bed, Audrey walked over to the television and opened a door on the cabinet beneath it to reveal dozens of narrow boxes, each one no more than half an inch wide. “You have not seen films until you’ve seen Hitchcock.”

“I’d be surprised if you could find a bird worse than I’ve met,” said Mal.

From the way that Audrey smiled, Mal had a suspicion that she was taking it as a challenge. “Well then,” she said, producing a case and flicking it open decisively. “I think we’ve found our viewing.”


End file.
